It’s the Friday before Mother’s Day at 10 am.

(I’d be there at 7 am if they’d let me)

The wait is excruciating.

It’s the day the Tomato Lady parts with her plants she’s been nursing from seedlings.

And I can carry them home and raise them as my own.

The enormity of the responsibility is not lost on me.

Better Boys, Jet Star, Mortgage Lifter, Sweet 100 Cherries, Celebrity, Super Fantastic – all the big names were there.

I hemmed and hawed and confined myself to 12 plants, and applauded my restraint all the way home.

And then planting…

This is my second year trying these red trays from Gardener’s Supply. In the past, the squirrels ate the roots, so my logic was that these trays would make it more difficult for the squirrels to get to them. The red color is also supposed to stimulate growth. Last year I had my best crop yet (barring the fact that the adorables ate them before they turned red) so I’m not changing anything. You can find them here.

The green tomato ladders are also from Gardener’s Supply and I’ve been using them for 4 years. They look so much better than the old cylinder things I had before. Click here to see them.

The adorables would like to know what time today the tomatoes will be ready.

I also have new gardening gloves to tell you about: meet Mud Glove

I love how clean my hands remain after a full day of digging around in the dirt.  I think you’ll also love how they keep hands relatively cool too.  They also have cutey-patootie gloves for the adorables.

Giveaway:

You can win 5 pairs of Mud Gloves just by leaving a comment by Tuesday, May 18th and I’ll choose the winner using Random.org on Wednesday, the 19th.

You can visit the Mud Glove store finder to locate these gloves near you.

A happy day to you!

My love and deep respect for manure.

I swear by it.

A rich black hot mess of nutrients.

Your plants will sink down into this stuff, spread their roots and shoot up, out, everywhere.

I should mention that this bagged manure is dried so it does not have the strong odor that the fresh stuff has.  I just put a huge garbage bag down in the van when I cart it home from the garden store.

I recruited a member of my staff for some help…

Fortunately, he works cheap.

Graham crackers work the same on him as cash.

I then moved in behind him with my favorite garden tool – the do-it-yourself rototiller:

Now strong arm it girls – it’s good for your abs!

The result is loosened, mixed wonder-soil.

Look at all that good wormy dirt just waiting to be planted.

This bed will “rest” for 2 weeks until we’re past my area’s frost date – May 8th.

Then Tomatoes. Sunflowers.  Lettuce.  Sugar Snap Peas. Basil. Marigolds.

I can barely stand the wait.

And before we know it, the little patch will look like this:

And most importantly, we’ll be munching on these:

Ahh summer!  I am looking so forward to you.

What do you have going on in your garden?  Trying anything new this year?  Planting yet?

Lush, ripe, healthy tomatoes.

Well they now looks like this:

Oh man.  These have seen better days.

The elder adorable was destroyed when I explained it was time to rip out the tomato plants for winter.  “But mom, I love to eat them whenever I want.”  Next year, next year.

So he helped me pull them out and I’m planning to put some tulip bulbs in pronto.

See how clean?  I couldn’t bear to part with these mums yet.  I love their pop of yellow happiness.

Fall is beautiful, but it’s such sweet parting with these dear tomatoes.  And hello, that means winter is coming.

I miss seeing these faces:

Elder adorable…

and younger adorable.

‘Til next year.

]]> http://www.thegoodstuffguide.com/so-long-tomatoes/feed/ 1 http://www.thegoodstuffguide.com/back-to-the-garden/ http://www.thegoodstuffguide.com/back-to-the-garden/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:52:26 +0000 Heidi Farmer http://www.thegoodstuffguide.com/?p=896 We returned from our 3-week stint in Michigan to see the jungle growing wild in our garden.

Well not all of it was jungle…

These Stargazer Lilies were actually quite pretty, if a little untamed.

But this one purple perennial geranium (yes, it’s a single plant) has created a mini-jungle for me to clear out.  It’s wrapped itself around everything else in its vicinity.  If it weren’t so pretty, I’d whack at it.

These pink impatiens were puny and straggly and I was about to give up on them.  And then Poof!  Huge.

These are from a climbing rose bush that I deadheaded in hopes of seeing another show of blooms.  Reward is sweet, and smells good too.

The biggest surprise was from the vegetable garden.

This May the adorables pushed these sunflower seeds into the soil with their chubby little fingers.  When we left at the beginning of July, they were 6 inches tall and floundering.  A little rain and sunshine and kaboom!

This is the best luck I’ve had with tomato plants in the 4 years I’ve been trying to grow them.   See here for info about these red trays and ladders.  I think they are a hit!

Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes in about a week!

So here’s the whole row of sunflowers, 12 tomato plants, 3 basils, 2 cukes, 2 green peppers, multiple lettuce and tons of marigolds.  It’s 40 feet long and 1 foot wide and packed with yum.